


Cover

by crimsonseekers



Series: Proverbs [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Origin Story, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sort Of, but now we’re here, this was meant to be a light hearted and fun character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 13:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19442380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonseekers/pseuds/crimsonseekers
Summary: Through the sights, he could see the mech's body lay prone on the floor of the stage, frame slowly turning to same dead grey of his own.Kill confirmed.He heard a scream.He abandoned his cover and returned to the evacuation point.





	Cover

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was supposed to based off the proverb/idiom/every-website-I-look-at-calls-it-something-different "Don't judge a book by its cover" but that didn't happen and I went in a completely different direction.
> 
> This was also supposed to be less than 2K words but look how that turned out I didn't think I would have this much to say about Bluestreak.

If you were to ask Bluestreak what his earliest memories were, his second response would most likely the first thing he remembered: his carrier. Not Prowl, the carrier who had sparked him is the one he’s talking about, though Prowl might as well be - Bluestreak wondered if the two might get along. They didn’t look that similar - his original carrier had a bubbly, bright neon paint job, and his sire many soft pastels - definitely different from the harsh black and white contrast of Prowl.

He certainly couldn’t remember what his original creators interests were, but he did remember the fond, loving touches and affectionate kisses they showered him with - similar in a way to how Prowl had treated him, but not too much - Prowl was never one for too much physical affection, he always said that sometimes it was a bit much for his sensor net to handle - full body contact such as hugs, or areas with more sensors like his servos just didn’t do well with too much or extended sensory input. Bluestreak didn’t have that problem unless people touched his doorwings, he remembered how angry Prowl would get (in his own Prowl-ish way) whenever somebody would try and pet his doorwings back when he was a sparkling and-

Bluestreak was getting off track. He did that a lot.

Anyway, the first thing in Bluestreak’s memory: his original carrier. He could recall his sire too, but his sire was often busy with work - it was his carrier who had stayed at home and took care of him in the fleeting instances that he could access in his memory banks.

But those memories were hardly the ones that had laid out and defined almost the rest of his existence - no, that would be perhaps the first thought that came to Bluestreak’s mind when he was asked of his earliest memories.

When prompted, he would tell you that the defining moment of his life was the bombing of Praxus.

He didn’t remember how it started - the whole situation was kind of a blur, the fast-paced events too much for his young processors to keep track of.

He remembered the explosions - everybody within a thousand-mile radius of Praxus remembered the explosions. Bluestreak just happened to be the only mech who had _survived_ the explosions. The bombs shrieked loudly as they fell - giving those who heard them perhaps a three klik warning that something was coming. Not enough time to do anything to protect yourself, but certainly enough time to realize that your end was coming as their haunting wails streamed closer.

He knew that one of the reasons he had survived was because his family had had an apartment on the second floor of one of the smaller housing complexes - perhaps only three, four stories high. 

When the building collapsed, he hadn’t fallen far, the landlord’s berth room happened to be below the living room of his family’s own apartment, and he landed on the landlord’s berth, cushioning his fall. The remains of the rest of the building had fallen around him in such a way that they provided cover for him from the debris that flew everywhere in the explosions that followed. Most of him was fine - his left leg had been caught under a beam, yet that was perhaps for the better - who knew what might’ve happened to him if he tried to leave the cover the rubble provided him with.

He was perfectly aware that his survival was due to a complex series of coincidences that had left him the sole survivor of Praxus.

Bluestreak remembered that his creators had lain a few meters away from him, offline, dead, gone forever - but he didn’t know that at the time. He was still at such an age that he didn’t understand what had happened, he didn’t understand death. He simply thought that they had lain down for a really long nap, and weren’t waking up when he cried for their attention.

He remembered the energon leaking from their frames - Bluestreak hadn’t understood the concept of bleeding at this point in his lifetime. He remembered the glowing pink rivulets that trickled towards him - Bluestreak also hadn’t understood the concept of energon as ‘life-blood’ yet either, but he did understand the concept of energon as food.

It was the reason why he hadn’t starved to death before Prowl found him.

Bluestreak remembered the seekers flying overhead - they were quite far up, and he couldn’t see them quite properly, and they were certainly too far away to hear. When he had mentioned this to Prowl, he had explained that they were most likely looking for survivors. He remembered hearing loud _rat-tat-tat-tat_ ’s in the distance, generally accompanied by screams. He had stopped hearing those before the night was over.

His own (naturally) deathly grey paint job was perhaps the reason the seekers had never noticed him in their flyovers - they thought he was already dead. Looking dead turned out to be an excellent cover for a frantic sparkling. His cover had lasted for three orns, according to Prowl.

Even more than the strafing of machine gun fire that Bluestreak had heard the night of the bombing, he remembered the absolute _silence_ that had followed. He had never heard anything something so quiet in his life.

Bluestreak’s life had _never_ been quiet up until that point. He remembered watching musical sparkling shows as his carrier bustled around the house, he remembered the sound of traffic and chatter whenever his carrier and sire took him out to cafés for lunch. Even at night, nothing was ever truly quiet. His creators would sing soft lullabies to tempt him to sleep and would play soft instrumentals as they rocked his lethargic sparkling body to rest. Even if he woke up in the middle of the night cycle, in the distance he could barely hear the wail of an enforcer’s sirens join his own as he cried for to be fed, or rocked back to sleep. One of his creators would always shuffle in shortly afterward to coo at him in reassuring tones.

But right then?

There was no house left for his carrier to hum in as he made energon goodies, all the traffic had stopped, he couldn’t hear any casual chatter between bots on the streets. His creators weren’t singing soft tunes to lull him to sleep, there was no radio playing the soft notes of Praxian folk music as his body weakened. There was no wail of sirens in the background, his vocalizer too abused to make his own. His creators didn’t come and pick him up to softly trill and hum at him, no words to make him feel safe.

Bluestreak _despised_ the quiet. His vocalizer had shorted out not too long after he had tried to remedy that himself.

The next thing in the sequence of events he remembered was Prowl finding him.

Dust was still falling from the sky three orns after the bombing, and it had begun to clog Bluestreak’s vents. Most of the seekers had stopped searching perhaps half an orn earlier, which was for the best for Bluestreak, as it meant two things: one, the Autobot rescue forces from a nearby base could move in, few as they were, and two, the seekers were not close enough to hear the hacking, stuttering cough that Bluestreak’s vents produced as they desperately tried to clear themselves.

When people coughed they tended to be alive, which the Decepticons very much did not want him to be.

But it was _exactly_ what the Autobots were looking for: a survivor. And that was exactly what Prowl found. Prowl found the only survivor. Prowl found Bluestreak.

Apparently, he had sounded like a choking turbofox whenever he coughed as a sparkling, though the amused twitch of Prowl’s lips whenever Jazz made that analogy made Bluestreak pretty sure that was an exaggeration. Jazz exaggerated a lot unless he was reporting to a superior or dealing with a crisis. But Bluestreak was getting off track again where was he-?

Right. Prowl had found Bluestreak thanks to his coughing - it was why he hadn’t just passed over the grey frame, looking similar to so many other offlined sparklings in the ruins of Praxus. This particular deathly grey sparkling had made noises that indicated _life_.

The stiff mech had paused, and his doorwings flared as he looked around, trying to locate the source of the sound. It was a reasonable action, Prowl had no cause to immediately suspect the small protoform that was the same grey as the extinguished frames that were a common sight in the rubble still held a living spark. When he had finally located the source of the noise, Bluestreak himself, he had immediately raced over to him and dropped the rifle he carried and was on his elbows and knees in no time.

He had carefully reached out to Bluestreak, who perhaps might have cried if he had not noticed the enforcer emblems on Prowl’s doorwings. He remembered his sire would always point out the enforcer’s whenever they went down to the cafés as a family. He would always point them out and tell him that if he ever felt unsafe or needed help, and his creators couldn’t help him, to always go to an enforcer. Enforcers would take care of him.

Bluestreak reached back. He was safe.

* * *

Bluestreak remembered Prowl carrying him back to where the medevac was (the one that only he would ever use).

He remembered coming across a small group of Decepticons (one of the last extermination squads looking for survivors - or to pick a fight with the Autobot rescue forces), no larger than four bots, his memory was a bit shaky, but that wasn’t the point.

He remembered Prowl had rocked and shushed him with soft words of reassurance - he didn’t coo or sparkling-talk him as his creators had, but the stable words of his near-monotone drawl made Bluestreak feel steady. He liked that. 

But Prowl had swiftly knelt down, arranging Bluestreak to lie behind his leg as Prowl rested his rifle against his knee.

Bluestreak remembered a pause, he remembered Prowl shuttering his optics and inventing before exventing and -

_Pip! Pip! Pip!_

Three near silent shots, three crashes as dead Decepticons fell to the ground.

Prowl sighed before slinging his rifle back over his shoulder and scooping Bluestreak back into his arms.

Bluestreak cooed and nuzzled himself into Prowl’s armor, the warmth of his plating welcome after two cold orns (the first had been relatively warm, thanks to many nearby buildings being on fire). His own tiny spark buzzed and felt gooey and soft as it synchronized with the steady, safe thrum of Prowl’s spark.

Prowl’s large (in comparison, at least) servo came to stroke along Bluestreak’s spinal struts, causing his tiny sensory panels to flutter like a baby bird's wings.

He had never felt better.

* * *

Bluestreak was terrified the first time he saw Prowl crash.

He couldn’t recall for the life of him what had caused it, and he was a bit scared to ask Prowl what had happened (Prowl always had an odd scowl on his lips whenever he talked about something that had caused his processors to lock up), but all he remembered it being one of the most absolutely terrifying things _ever_.

It had been after a meeting with some of Prowl’s officers, and Bluestreak could remember tightly digging his tiny servo into a transformation seam on Prowl’s leg - looking back he was surprised that the other Praxian had never complained or even winced whenever Bluestreak had twisted his small fingers into wires and clusters of sensors in his leg those first few quartexes.

He had been practically glued to his guardian ever since he had been released from the medibay after he was brought back to the base. Bluestreak remembered feeling confused when his creators never came back but had latched onto Prowl as a source of steadiness in the unfamiliar environment. The discussion over what was to happen with him was still going on with the Autobot high command at that point.

Nobody Bluestreak ever knew felt steadier than Prowl - he was the most structured, organized, and calm mech that ever existed. Which was probably why Bluestreak had freaked out when Prowl, out of nowhere, just collapsed.

Well, not quite out of nowhere, but Bluestreak didn’t recognize the crackle and _pop!_ that would precede a crash - the noise of Prowl’s logic processors and battle computer overheating and entering a forced reboot.

Prowl had simply dropped, and Bluestreak didn’t know _what_ was happening.

All he knew was this mech, his guardian who had become a beacon of hope for him, someone who would guard him from anything, always be there to rescue and protect him - his pillar of strength had just _shattered_ in front of him.

Bluestreak screamed.

He remembered being gathered into someone else’s arms and taken away from Prowl as the officer he had been talking to called for a medic - he remembered wondering why they weren’t worried.

He sobbed and kicked at the soldier desperately trying to console the panicking bitlet in his arms - he didn’t want _them,_ he wanted _Prowl!_

Prowl was strong - he would never collapse like that! Why did they all sound so unconcerned about it? The only answer available to his sparkling processors was that Prowl was hurt - he had been hurt by something Bluestreak couldn’t see. It was something Bluestreak couldn’t protect him from.

He remembered the medic connecting to Prowl and easing his systems back online - the uncomfortable tilt of his doorwings as the Praxian rose from his undignified sprawl on the floor. Bluestreak had grabbed onto Prowl’s armor as soon as he had been handed back and hadn’t let go for cycles.

He remembered Prowl explaining what had happened in soft tones to him, when they had returned to their quarters later, using small, simple words that he could recognize and understand at that age. He remembered the odd tone in Prowl’s voice that Bluestreak later recognized as vulnerability. He remembered being told about the glitch between Prowl’s logic processors and emotional cortex - the disconnect there that made it difficult for Prowl to deal with unexpected emotional situations. Sometimes difficult to point of a forced hard reboot of his processors.

Bluestreak remembered learning that Prowl wasn’t invincible - that there were things that Prowl couldn’t rescue or shoot to solve, things he couldn’t correct with a brilliant tactic or discipline into compliance with a creative punishment and time in the brig.

Bluestreak would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Prowl was would always let Bluestreak curl against him those nights, ignoring the static and overblown feedback of his over-reactive sensor net in order to give him comfort.

Prowl always protected Bluestreak.

Prowl crashed when faced with an unexpected social situation. Bluestreak had screamed and sobbed and kicked when he hadn’t been able to do _anything_ to help him.

Bluestreak wanted to protect Prowl.

* * *

The next big thing Bluestreak remembered was meeting Jazz.

He had been in Prowl’s care for about a vorn by that point, the older Praxian having fought something fierce to get custody of him. Bluestreak himself had been in Prowl’s office when he was having the call with the rest of high command - Optimus Prime himself was in Iacon, Elita-1 was near Tesarus, Ultra Magnus in Altihex, and so on. Prowl (and subsequently Bluestreak) was stationed on a base between Crystal City and the ruins of Praxus.

Bluestreak really only remembered so much about the meeting because mechs on the base had liked performing dramatic re-enactments of Prowl’s final argument with the Autobot high command. Was it remembering something if you were there for an event but most of your knowledge was second hand anyways? Bluestreak wasn’t sure.

Anyway, meeting Jazz. It was hard to not remember, Jazz was a mech whom meeting could only be described as an _experience_. It had apparently been a long time since the SpecOps agent (he wouldn’t be Third in Command for another thirty thousand vorn) had been on the base, according to whispers that Bluestreak vaguely remembered, longer than usual. He was a popular mech too, simply judging from the amount of talk and compliments around him.

But yeah, Bluestreak definitely remembered Jazz.

He was animated and boisterous - a little bit weird as well, Bluestreak could recall meeting Jazz when he had dropped out of the vents into Prowl’s office, unannounced. He had shrieked when the black and white mech appeared. It clearly made an impression on Jazz, as he had gone on to be very careful around Bluestreak until he had reached his youngling frame.

The mech seemed to walk along to a beat only he could hear, with some dramatic spins thrown in to give him an opportunity to wave at mechs he knew. Which seemed to be everybody. Jazz knew everybody, and everybody knew Jazz.

Prowl definitely knew Jazz - he was perhaps the only mech other than himself and Smokescreen (who was close family to Prowl) to greet the relatively stoic mech with a hug. Jazz was the only mech other than himself he had ever seen Prowl smile at, and Bluestreak thought that had to mean something about Jazz. Bluestreak decided that if Prowl liked Jazz so much then he liked Jazz too.

Not that it was hard to like Jazz, Jazz was a very likable person. Whenever he saw Bluestreak, he would talk to him a bit (not seeming to mind at all that Bluestreak talked a _lot_ , and that not much of it was understandable, as sparklings were not widely known for their incredibly elegant articulation), or at the very least say hello, and crouch a bit to give him a fist-bump, which he would clumsily reciprocate.

He also remembered when they had kissed in front of him one time. He giggled at the soft look that was on each of their faces as they parted - giggled in that way that sparklings were prone to do. Jazz had turned to him with a conspiratorial look on his face and put a single digit over his lips, the universal gesture to keep something quiet.

Bluestreak got it - they were keeping cover, and the way they acted in front of all the other mechs was simply them saving face - so that meant that they had to hide these interactions from something. They had to cover them to keep them safe from… _something_. Who knew.

Bluestreak smiled a sparkling’s smile and put his servo over his mouth in a clumsy return of Jazz’s action.

He could understand cover. Cover meant safety. He would keep it for them, if not for Jazz, then definitely for Prowl.

* * *

The next really notable event in Bluestreak’s life (relatively, at least, everything felt kinda huge when you grew up in a military base in the middle of a civil war) had happened a bit after he had reached his youngling frame.

It was the first time he had seen a Decepticon since Praxus. There was an attack on the base - everybody had been on edge for a while at that point, there had been intelligence reports of Decepticon activity around Crystal City for a while by that time.

Bluestreak remembered the wail of the attack sirens - they sounded just like the wail of the bombs as they dropped from the sky - that sound meant _danger_ , that sound meant he had to get to safety, he had to get to cover right then. Prowl had clearly agreed with his internal panicking, pressing his chevron against Bluestreak’s affectionately before telling him to hurry to the security hub - it was an armored room, he would be safe there.

Hurry Bluestreak did.

But he hadn’t been fast enough. One of Soundwave’s cassettes - Ravage - had found him just outside the security hub. 

He remembered the fear that shot through his struts as he froze, Ravage coiling back to pounce. The helplessness and terror that gripped his spark as the symbiote flew through the air at him and he wasn’t safe he wasn’t safe he had no cover and Ravage would get him and _eat him alive and oh Primus this is how it ends-_

_Bang!_

Ravage dropped to grounded with a pained roar, before quickly recollecting himself and hissing at something behind Bluestreak. He scampered away when a second shot skimmed his haunches.

That was how Bluestreak had met Red Alert, the base’s security director. Well not really _met_ , more like actually interact with - he had technically met Red Alert before back when Prowl would bring him to meetings, before Bluestreak was old enough to be left on his and Prowl didn’t really trust any of the rowdy mechs on base to keep him safe (From Decepticons? Yes. From themselves and their stupid activities? No.). Red Alert had always been a very professional mech and had never been too interested in interacting with Prowl’s charge, he was much more concerned with the idiots who had been messing with the cameras in section 15C, thank you very much.

Red Alert had herded him into the security hub, and he had felt the tension leave his frame as the blast door sealed behind them.

That was a barricade between him and the rest of the world, keeping him safe. Bluestreak found he quite like the way Red Alert thought.

* * *

Bluestreak remembered learning how to use a firearm.

Prowl, as any good carrier would (though he certainly didn’t know that’s what Bluestreak would always call him in his mind), absolutely lost it when he heard what had almost happened to him. Well, he lost it in the sense that Prowl loses his mind, he wasn’t going around flipping tables (although he had heard from Jazz that Prowl had done it in anger a few times, long ago). He flared his doorwings threateningly, against an aggressor who wasn’t there, and told Bluestreak that he would be teaching him how to use a gun the first off-shift he got after the post-battle rush shifts, incident reports, and paperwork were completed.

The first thing that Prowl taught him before they had even entered the firing range one base, was that a gun was not a toy. He made sure that Bluestreak knew that for a fact. He was told that if Prowl ever saw him pointing a firearm at anybody on base, unless they had clearly made themselves out to be a threat to him, or using it for any purposes that were not self-defense, Bluestreak would be grounded until he was of age.

He would spend all his time either tagging along with Prowl while he was on duty or helping out Red Alert in the security hub (no matter how cool they thought their creator is, most younglings didn’t want to spend all of their time with them. Bluestreak, as big a fan of Prowl as he was, was no exception). Any toys he had would be confiscated. As a small mechling who had only just come into his youngling frame, ‘until he was of age’ was a long, _long_ time. Basically forever.

Bluestreak was pretty sure he got the point.

Besides, he was a relatively obedient creation afterall, and always followed Prowl’s rules down to the glyph. Sure, Bluestreak might have been a bit of a goody-two-pedes, but it was worth pointing out that as a pretty logical mech (though not to the point of eliminating emotion from the equation completely, as Shockwave was prone to do), everything Prowl said made _sense_. Prowl always provided Bluestreak with a reason as to why he had certain rules, logical arguments as to why he didn’t have the same freedoms all the soldiers did. Never once did Prowl tell him to do something simply because he said so.

So Prowl took Bluestreak into the firing range after he was sure that the youngling had understood his point ( _weapon, not toy_ ), and had a few brief words with the base weapons specialist and gotten Bluestreak a blaster sized for some of the smaller minibots. It had still felt a bit big in his servos, but maybe that was just the weight of the weapon or something poetic like that.

Prowl had sat him down at a table off to the side, put the sidearm on the table, and made sure Bluestreak knew every part of the weapon - had him deconstruct and rebuild it, unload and reload it until his small servos could do so as fast and with as much ease as his still developing coordination could handle. They didn’t even get around to shooting anything those first two lessons, but Bluestreak did feel intimately familiar with the weapon that he would carry at his side.

When they did finally get around to it, something clicked - something felt _right_. Bluestreak wasn’t saying that he enjoyed shooting people, what he _enjoyed_ was the feeling of being able to protect people.

He wasn’t bad at it either, not in the slightest - apparently, he had always been quite the shot. Sure, Prowl had to correct his stance more than once (Bluestreak never claimed to be the best student or to have the best posture), but Prowl wasn’t a bad teacher by any means. Bluestreak had continued to employ almost all of his advice throughout the war: fan his doorwings to monitor airspeed and direction, but away from his frame so the recoil of a shot wouldn’t travel through the sensitive panels. Pin them back if it looked like there would be return fire - enemy combatants would always shoot for his spark chamber, and if they missed, there was a high chance it would hit his sensory panels - either way, he would go down.

But even with all his original fumbling, from the get-go, he had been one of the best shots on base. He aimed and he could just _see_ where the shots were going to end up.

The base’s weapons specialist had suggested that Bluestreak learn to use a sniper rifle - he clearly had a good optic.

Prowl had paused as if considering the suggestion. Bluestreak knew he was thinking about it, Prowl thought about everything.

No, Prowl had said. Perhaps when he was older.

That was fine, Bluestreak had thought, feeling the weight of the gun holster magnetized to his thigh. He had enough protection for now. He could get more later.

* * *

Bluestreak remembered meeting Optimus Prime.

Like Jazz, it was difficult to not remember meeting him, but for somewhat different reasons. While Jazz would immediately strike a mech as friendly and someone you could easily talk too, Optimus Prime held every bit the intimidating aura of an authority mech, someone whose words and actions carried far more weight than your entire existence ever would - though perhaps Bluestreak was a bit off in his initial assessment, Optimus truly tried to connect with and understand his troops, it was just that something about meeting a mech probably four or five times your height was a bit intimidating.

Bluestreak remembered squeaking in fright and hiding behind Prowl’s legs when the mech came along.

A lot intimidating.

Prowl had been saluting the Prime, but with his other hand, had reached behind his back and was rubbing comforting patterns into Bluestreak’s chevron. After Prime had dismissed the troops, he turned to address Prowl - whom he hadn’t talked to in person for at least the twelve thousand vorn that Bluestreak had been in his care. He could vaguely remember seeing Prime whenever Prowl would be on a call with him back when he still brought Bluestreak to meetings, but that was it.

There had been a second attack on the base they had previously been stationed at (well, _Prowl_ was stationed there, Bluestreak was more a dependent), and Prime had decided that it was time to pull his Second in Command out of the field. Prowl hadn’t been terribly happy about the decision, but he had explained to Bluestreak that it would be much safer at the Autobot headquarters for _both_ of them. So they transferred to Iacon.

When Prime had curiously asked who he was, Prowl had introduced him as his charge, before raising an optic ridge and asking if the Prime had forgotten about the youngling he had fought him for the custody of.

Bluestreak could recall being worried for Prowl - according to all the other soldiers, you did _not_ talk back to a superior officer in that fashion.

He was at least eighty percent sure that there was not an officer more superior than the Prime.

But the Prime had simply chuckled - to Bluestreak, it was more like the convoy rumbled; his deep voice and powerful engine didn’t exactly lend themselves to softer noises as such - and shook Prowl’s hand, welcoming him back.

* * *

Bluestreak stopped living in Prowl’s quarters shortly after they transferred to Iacon.

He started sharing a room with another youngling older than him named Bumblebee. As he was a minibot, Bluestreak was taller than him - an odd experience for the Praxian who had spent his entire life surrounded by soldiers and officers at least twice his height.

Bee had apparently been taken in by the Prime’s bodyguard/weapons specialist after facing similar circumstances that Bluestreak had - destroyed home, no family to return to, no safe way to be passed to off-world neutral settlements.

He didn’t remember any of it - Bluestreak _did_ , most often in the form of nightmares.

Bee was a nice and cheerful ‘bot, he seemed understanding enough when Bluestreak would wake him up occasionally in the middle of the night, asking if he could hug him, never saying no and welcoming a panicking Bluestreak into his arms with a reassuring smile. But he didn’t _get it_.

Bluestreak started sneaking to Prowl’s quarters whenever he had a particularly bad recharge flux - his room wasn’t far from the officer barracks.

Prowl would always welcome him in - Jazz would sometimes be there as well (he saw Jazz a lot more after they moved to Iacon), but he always left whenever Bluestreak showed up.

Bluestreak would quietly knock on Prowl’s door, and within moments the door would open, and he would be gently ushered in. No questions were ever asked. Prowl would put on some soft Praxian instrumentals in the background, quiet enough to be ignored but _something_ to drown out the stifling quiet. Bluestreak would crawl underneath the berth covers and curl up against Prowl, letting the steady thrum of Prowl’s spark through his doorwings remind him that he wasn’t alone.

* * *

Bluestreak remembered how _proud_ he felt when he finished his sniper boot camp.

Ironhide had backed up what the weapons specialist at the previous base had implied - Bluestreak was a natural shot, a good one too if the shocked flare of his EM field had been anything to go by.

Bluestreak looked down the scope of the rifle, he flared his doorwings to monitor the speed and temperature of wind, and he _knew_ that when he pulled the trigger, his shot would meet its mark.

It always did whenever he fired.

Bang.

Bullseye.

_Target down._

* * *

Bluestreak remembered his first kill.

He remembered all the mechs he had killed, looking down the scope of his rifle. But his first definitely stood out from among the rest.

He had been lying on the edge of a cliff, having no disguise on him other than the deathly hue of his grey paint job. Whenever he lay still, he looked like a dead frame. Even mechs who had scavenged on dead bots had found conditions hostile enough to join a side many vorn ago. Nobody would disturb a dead frame. So he laid there for joors, icily still, moving minutely to keep eyes on his target through his scope.

The target was a high priority one - the only reason Bluestreak had been given this as his first assignment was because of scanners set up in the camp would detect any spark signals within 2.5 miles. They couldn’t send a SpecOps mech, who could dampen and hide their spark signatures, the camp was too large and too open and too well guarded for an agent to make it through cleanly - and Special Operations wasn’t handing out their expensive dampening technology to anyone.

Bluestreak was an excellent sniper - he could shoot a bullseye from up to four miles away. That kind of long-range shooting skill was an extreme scarcity in the Autobot army - most of their snipers could only shoot up to two miles.

So after a heated debate that decided that the target could not wait, Bluestreak was sent in.

He’d had battlefield assignments and assessments before that, but the rifles he had used for those were meant less for killing someone and more for stunning and knocking enemy combatants back and away from those on your side. To shoot someone from the distance Bluestreak did and have enough power to offline a mech, you needed something powerful and sturdy - something much slower to reload and move around than the quick and light rifles you were given for the fast-paced battles.

It was the thing about being a sniper - when it wasn’t a battle and one was assigned to take someone out like Bluestreak was, one was assigned there for a reason. His first assignment had been a statement kill. You were to only kill the target, so no matter how good a shot you were, you had to wait until you were absolutely sure you would hit anybody else. It had to be clean - the cleaner the kill, the better the threat. The Autobots could get you, no matter how well guarded you think you base is. That was the idea.

You had to blend into the environment - you never knew how long it might take to get a clear shot - and once you were blended, you _stayed_ until you’d either taken down the target, or your handler decided the assignment was too time-consuming and you were pulled.

Apparently how much time was too much varied from assignment to assignment - he had heard stories in boot camp of one mech who had watched his target for twelve orns. The mech had apparently needed therapy for the following three vorn.

Bluestreak was also much more observant than most would credit the chatty mech.

Bluestreak felt as if he knew the target intimately - he watched as he laughed with his friends, played drinking games with the platoon, was handed reports and gave orders and retired to his tent for the night. He clearly a well-liked commander - his troops smiled when they talked to him, and chuckled as he made jokes with a lopsided smirk on his face.

But he was the enemy.

So after laying on that cliff throughout the night cycle, Bluestreak discovered something else - this particular mech was an early riser. The target had emerged from his tent and stretched his arms above his head - Bluestreak could almost hear his struts pop back into alignment looking at the fresh out of recharge dimness of his optics. His doorwings slowly began to flare from their dead-looking position, where they had previously been laid at uncomfortable angles by his sides.

But this mech wasn’t the only early riser Bluestreak found out, as he watched the racer frame grab a morning cube of energon with some of his subordinates.

Bluestreak’s sensory panels lowered back to their previous positions.

He was too slow.

But it was a joor later when the commander had got onto a stage for the morning address that Bluestreak saw his chance.

His doorwings lifted once more-

_The wind was more of a draft, headed northwest-_

He relaxed his frame-

_The safety was off, the gun was armed-_

He aligned the crosshairs perfectly with his target-

_The rifle was turned a fraction of a degree to the left-_

He paused as heads bobbed when the racer made a wisecrack-

_Another mech was headed to get on the stage-_

Hesitation graced his frame as a crooked smile passed the target’s lips-

_If the shot didn’t make it, it would be another orns wait ‘til the next morning address-_

He considered his target-

_The appropriate clearance area was about to be breached-_

He wondered how all those troops would react when their commander fell-

_Shoot-_

The feelings when a mech who was obviously a beacon of hope passed-

_Shoot-_

When their pillar of steadiness, strength, and order fell-

_Shoot-_

He could understand what their panicked responses would be-

_Shoot-_

He wondered how many would mourn the mech-

**_SHOOT!_ **

**BANG!**

He felt the recoil of the powerful sniper rifle jolt down his spinal struts.

Through the sights, he could see the mech’s body lay prone on the floor of the stage, frame slowly turning to same dead grey of his own.

_Kill confirmed._

He heard a scream.

He abandoned his cover and returned to the evacuation point.

* * *

On the ride back to Iacon he had stared at his hands and considered.

He didn’t consider anything in particular - just himself

He remembered being proud when he finished the sniper boot camp.

He remembered being proud when he joined the Autobot army.

He remembered being proud when he was told that he was the best sniper they had for the assignment.

He didn’t feel proud.

He didn’t feel anything.

Bluestreak wondered if the emptiness was normal.

* * *

Bluestreak remembered crying himself to sleep in Prowl’s arms.

This was one thing Prowl was unable to console him on. Prowl had encouraged him to talk to Jazz about it - assured that he would understand better than Prowl ever could, and that not a word of it would be spoken to anybody. He could keep a secret.

Jazz had understood. He had listened to Bluestreak’s long rambling descriptions of what the target ( _Dunerunner_ , he remembered) had looked like - how he had drunk with his subordinates, how well liked he seemed. How he was always so close with other mechs that Bluestreak’s only opportunity was when he was addressing all of the troops.

Jazz had simply waited and held him when he started stuttering as he got to the part where he had pulled the trigger.

Bluestreak asked Jazz if he had done a bad thing - he asked if they were making the right decisions in this war.

Jazz told him of the first time he was sent on an assassination - before the war. He recounted following his target for over a quartex, to learn his schedule - where he would be and when - learn his routine, watch his interactions with his co-workers, friends, _family_ -

He had killed the target in a back alley and left his empty frame against a dumpster.

Bluestreak asked him why he killed, how he coped with snuffing out sparks with own two servos so often.

Jazz told him he fought and killed to protect those he loved.

They sat in silence for a few breems before Bluestreak tentatively asked if it ever got easier.

Jazz told him that it did, eventually.

Bluestreak looked at him for a long moment.

He wondered when the SpecOps agent’s cover had gotten so good that he could believe his own lies.

* * *

Bluestreak remembered when Prowl and Jazz had revealed that they had been bonded since before the war.

Most of the troops on board the Ark were shocked - he wasn’t. Bluestreak had known that were together in at least some way since he had first seen the two kiss. Then again, he supposed that he was allowed to see much more than the rest of the mechs on the base had.

Bluestreak had smiled when they immediately surpassed the shock of that with news of a sparkling.

He had always wanted a younger sibling.

Bluestreak remembered that if they could put down their guard and the paranoia to find happiness, then perhaps he could as well.

Perhaps he could get rid of his cover, and stop living in fear.

The klaxon warning of a Decepticon attack sounded.

Bluestreak got his rifle and raced to the battlefield with the rest of the Autobots.

Maybe after the battle.

Right then, he had to find a sniping position outside of the power station the Decepticons were attacking.

The other soldiers were trusting him to watch their backs.

The Prime trusted him to keep his troops alive.

_His friends trusted him to never bring them harm._

Jazz trusted him to make the right decisions.

Prowl trusted him to do his best.

_His loved ones trusted him to keep everyone safe._

Bluestreak had to cover his family.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for listening to me try and be artsy by writing a fic that's over six thousand words about the chattiest Autobot without ever using dialogue.  
> Why did I make Bluestreak suffer so much
> 
> The ending was a bit rushed and feels a bit rushed to me, but I was running out of things to say about Bluestreak and this fic was already like three times longer than I had planned it to be.
> 
> On a less serious note, I find I relate a lot to Bluestreak the way I wrote him because we're both super big Prowl fans.  
> This was supposed to focus on Bluestreak but I found that I put his relationship with Prowl into the spotlight a lot, so I'm considering doing a part two that tells events from Prowl's point of view.
> 
> Constructive criticism and comments are appreciated!
> 
> My [tumblr](https://crimsonseekers.tumblr.com/)


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